In 2008, President Obama said he would “bankrupt” coal plant owners and force energy prices across the U.S. to “skyrocket” as part of his plan to combat global warming – and now a new EPA rule on power plant emissions promises to do just that, slashing as much as 40 percent of the nation’s power supply and possibly even doubling Americans’ energy bills.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted” Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008.
He added, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, uh, retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”